
MEMORIAL CHURCH 



HAMPTON'S MESSAGE 



BY 



SYDNEY DODD FRISSELL 







PRESS OF THE HAMPTON NORMAL 
AND AGRICULTURAL INSTITUTE, 
HAMPTON. VIRGINIA, 19H 



(t .-rtf Tw WiSTj 
^ 1914 



• *• • 



HAMPTON'S MESSAGE 

BY SYDNEY DODD FRISSELL 

IS a building needed at Hampton ? Masons and bricklayers 
must mix sand and cement ; carpenters must make doors 
and window frames ; painters, tinsmiths, plumbers, steam- 
fitters — all must take their turn before the building is com- 
pleted. The lessons of these Negro students stand in cement, 
brick, and plaster, in woodwork, tin, and iron. 

Theories learned in the classroom these tradesmen apply 
at the building, and the facts gained at the building they carry 
to the classroom. 

From the raw material of a backward race, strong men 
and women are made at Hampton. What is the process which 
moulds black men and women and Indian youths into suc- 
cessful leaders in the education, industry, and agriculture of 
their people ? 

Hampton is founded on the knowledge that the common 
task and daily round are a means of grace and a source of cul- 
ture and intellectual development. Training there is modeled 
upon the most effective educational institution the world has 
produced — the home. Hampton, like the home, has daily 
problems to solve. 



HAMPTON'S MESSAGE 

At Hampton there is no prejudice in favor of the class- 
room. Facts are considered as valuable as theories. Skillful 
hands are ranked with books. Each student has his work in 
the life of this great family and every student must carry a 
vocation away with him. 

The bugles blow at five-thirty in the morning. In the day 
that follows, eleven hours of work and study are crowded in- 
to the lives of blacksmiths, carpenters, and other tradesmen, 
five days in the week. The day which is hailed as holiday or 
half-holiday in other schools, at Hampton is called "work 
day." Upon this day all boys and girls are given work outside 
their shops or fixed position in kitchen or laundry, to help 
them further in earning their way through school. 

At Hampton it is a punishment to deprive a boy or girl 
of work. There all useful work is a means of support and 
advance. 

II 

Samuel Chapman Armstrong began a Negro school with 
two teachers and fifteen students of varying ages, in a planta- 
tion house and army barracks at Hampton, nearly fifty years 
ago. 

Following a brilliant war record and a successful admin- 
istration of large territory at the close of the war, Armstrong 
chose to give his life to training leaders for a race. 

"We are here not merely to make students, but men and 
women ; to build up character and fit teachers and leaders," 




OVER EIGHT HUNDRED 
STUDENTS TRAINING FOR 
LEADERSHIP." 



HAMPTON'S MESSAGE 

he said. For twenty-five years he worked unsparingly and un- 
ceasingly, until the old plantation house, where Hampton In- 
stitute began, was surrounded by shops, by dormitories, by 
recitation halls; until he saw the Hampton idea carried by his 
students and teachers to Tuskegee, Calhoun, Mt. Meigs, Car- 
lisle, and scores of communities near and far. 

With shattered health, exhausted from years of pleading 
for Hampton and enlarging its work, worn out before his time, 
Armstrong literally gave his life for an idea of education and 
human training, when he died in his prime, twenty-odd years 

ago. 

The hundred and forty buildings, the thousand acres of 

land, the courses in thirteen trades, in teaching and home- 
making, in business and farming ; and over eight hundred 
students training for leadership are the physical growth of 
Hampton. 

Eight thousand men and women have gone out from Hamp- 
ton to South, North, and West, trained for teaching, trained for 
home-building, trained for the trades. In taking their places in 
Negro and Indian schools of the South and West and in hun- 
dreds of communities, this army of workers has helped to de- 
crease illiteracy and to train Negroes and Indians for the re- 
sponsiblity of owning land. 

Through Hampton outposts and graduates, the method of 
industrial training has become thoroughly established as the 
educational solution of a race problem. 

Hampton today has become the headquarters of an army 




HAMPTON TODAY HAS BE- 
COME THE HEADQUARTERS 
OF AN ARMY OF UPLIFT." 



HAMPTON'S MESSAGE 

of uplift. The class which graduates this year will take pbsi- 
tions at strategic points in leading the advance to better 
schools, to better farming, and to industrial training. Girls, 
skillful as teachers and grounded in home arts and industries, 
will go from Hampton to supervise Negro and Indian schools 
In Virginia alone, there are ten women graduates of Hampton 
who are supervising the industrial work in the rural schools 
of ten counties, under the direction of the state supervisor of 
rural schools. 

A Hampton graduate visits the Negro schools of the entire 
South, to study the field problems, as pioneer for the Hampton 
men and women who go out as officers in an army of uplift. 

Hampton's county industrial workers meet the people 
and the teachers and win their co-operation. Patrons are or- 
ganized into improvement leagues, and soon the schools im- 
prove their appearance. Necessary repairs are made, win- 
dows are washed, floors are scrubbed, flowers and shrubs are 
planted, and walks are laid out. 

Regular periods are set in the school program for sewing, 
shuck-mat making, cooking, and other work with materials 
at hand. In the long vacation the girls are formed into garden 
clubs through which they learn, from their supervising teacher, 
how to raise and can fruits and vegetables. 

The country school has become a community center. 
The colored homes of entire counties have improved. 
The benefit of simple industries to character and community 
has been clearly proved. 

10 



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THE SOUTH AND WESTgARE 
OPEN FIELDS FOR TRADES- 
MEN TRAINED AT HAMP- 
TON.'' 



11 



HAMPTON'S MESSAGE 

This rural-school work is carried on through the Negro 
Rural-School Fund in 119 counties in the various Southern 
states. 

Negro and Indian women, trained by practice teaching, 
skilled in home industries, experienced as cooks, dressmak- 
ers, and housekeepers by four years' work and study in the 
Hampton family, are sent to officer these campaigns of edu- 
cation for their people. With them the leaders of education 
in state and county co-operate. From Hampton's laundries, 
kitchens, and classrooms, the girls continue to go out, carry- 
ing the plan of Hampton farther afield each year. 

TRADESMEN IN DEMAND 
'T^HE South and West are open fields for the tradesmen 

and farmers trained at Hampton. About seventy per cent of 
the tradesmen graduated from the school are engaged in trade 
work. The complete training as carpenters, bricklayers, black- 
smiths, or machinists, assures Hampton men of leadership 
among their people. 

Many Hampton tradesmen have taken places in the in- 
dustrial life of their races by directing the trade training in 
other Negro and Indian schools. It is significant that more 
than a hundred tradesmen and teachers have gone from the 
parent school to help Booker Washington at Tuskegee. About 
twenty per cent of the Negro boys from Hampton shops go 
out to teach their trades. 



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CARPENTERS MUST MAKE 
DOORS AND WINDOW 
FRAMES." 



13 



HAMPTON'S MESSAGE 

The success of Negro tradesmen in the competition of 
modern life at the South is no less important than the teach- 
ing of trades to others. In Birmingham, Atlanta, Richmond, 
Norfolk, and Danville, Negro graduates of Hampton have be- 
come successful contractors. When in positions of trust and 
responsibility, or as employers of other workers, graduates 
give valuable aid to members of their race who lack advan- 
tages but are striving for a chance. 

HAMPTON'S TRAINED FARMERS 

TN the building up of worn-out land the Negro and In- 
dian farmers, trained in the fields and dairies of Hampton, 
are filling a large place. Of the eighty-three boys who have 
completed the regular agricultural course, ten are still in 
school; fifty-eight are now following some branch of agricul- 
tural work; thirty-seven are connected with educational in- 
stitutions; and eighteen are farming their own land. 

All of the nine Negro farm-demonstration agents in Vir- 
ginia have been Hampton students. John B. Pierce, sent 
out by Hampton and working under the direction of the 
United States Department of Agriculture, began the Negro 
farm-demonstration work in Nottoway County, Virginia. 
Poor corn lands doubled their yield; systematic crop rota- 
tion has increased fertility and profits. The gardens, yards, 
and homes of Negro landowners have been made attractive. 



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THE BOYS WHO SEEK THE 
LAND ARE GIVEN A COURSE 
IN FIELD PRACTICE." 



15 



HAMPTON'S MESSAGE 

General Armstrong wisely said, "The teacher- far mer'Js 
the man for the times; he is essentially an educator through- 
out the year." 

The boys at Hampton who seek the land, like the workers 
in brick and iron, are given a course in field practice which 
places them for long periods of responsibility in the dairies, 
poultry yards, orchards, and horse barns,'and upon the fields. 
Fifty-one hours a week in their first year they labor at their 
tasks upon the farm. They have, in addition to their reg- 
ular farm work, courses in dairying, farm crops, English, ele- 
mentary science, and applied mathematics. Like the boys of 
the shops, the men in the field are advanced in cultural sub- 
jects as they proceed in their four years of vocational train- 
ing. Coaching in the classrooms upon the management of a 
farm and every department of a farm is continued to the end. 

From the shops and fields alike, men must run at the 
stroke of noon, for every farmer and tradesman has a place in 
his company of the school battalion. Fifteen minutes from 
the close of work at noon, each boy must answer to his 
name in company formation and march with the battalion to 
his place at dinner. This military training is required of 
every boy as long as he remains in the Hampton family. 

HAMPTON'S TRAINED TEACHERS AND HOMEMAKERS 

TTVERY Hampton girl graduate is a trained teacher. 

Every colored or Indian girl who leaves the school 

has had long practice in sewing, cooking, laundering, 

16 




FIFTY-ONE HOURS A WEEK 
IN THEIR FIRST YEAR 
THEY LABOR UPON THE 
FARM." 



17 



HAMPTON'S MESSAGE 

dairying, gardening, and housekeeping. The last half-year in 
the course of these future teachers is given to teaching in the 
Whittier School of Hampton, where classes among the five 
hundred Negro children are managed by the graduating 
women of two races, who work under expert supervision. 

A broad range of academic study is given to these leaders 
who must mould and direct the lives of many thousands of 
the children of their races. 

Earning their way by the continual practice and study 
of household arts, the girls are given at the same time such 
broad training in sociology, psychology, history, literature, 
and methods of teaching as shall fit them to hold firmly the 
strategic positions of leadership for which they are constantly 
sought. 

Struggling yearly to earn their way, and earning more 
each year as their work becomes more efficient, these men 
and women of Hampton receive training in spending their 
own money and in keeping their own accounts. They thus 
gain a knowledge of business which stands them in good stead. 

THE GREATER HAMPTON 

A BRIEF review of the methods and curricula of Hamp- 
ton Institute can give no adequate conception of the 
life which moulds the crude youth of two races into strong 
leaders. Neither the outline of a system nor its results can 
give a true impression of the spirit of a place. 

18 




EVERY GIRL HAS PRAC- 
TICE IN DAIRYING." 



19 



HAMPTON'S MESSAGE 

The lives given to the school, the ideal of service which 
Armstrong left, the devotion of other workers grown old in 
the service, have established a tradition and atmosphere at 
Hampton, creating spiritual power that no system or curricu- 
lum can give. 

Outside of the confines of the school in Virginia, beyond 

the farthest outpost of Hampton's graduates, the benefit of 
Hampton has passed. For Hampton has become a demonstra- 
tion station of industrial training and racial adjustment, not 
only for America, South and North, but for Africa, India, and 
Macedonia. Visitors from all parts of the globe have come 
with increasing frequency to this demonstration station of 
racial training. 

The greatest national value of Hampton, in addition to 
the steady constructive work among two races, is in its benefit 
to America as a common platform where the white man and 
black man, the Southerner and the Northerner, meet each year 
for social service, with tolerance and constructive spirit. 

Each year at Hampton there is a succession of conferences 
for constructive work in the South. Among recent conferences 
may be mentioned that of the National Association of Colored 
Women; the annual Negro farmers' conference; the state super- 
intendents of public instruction for the Southern states; the 
representatives and secretaries of the General Education Board, 
the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission, the Jeanes Board, the 
United States Department of Agriculture; and the Southern 



20 




NEGRO AND INDIAN 
WOMEN SKILLED IN HOME 
INDUSTRIES." 



21 



HAMPTON'S MESSAGE 

University Commission on the Race Question — all represent- 
ative of the great forces of constructive work in education, 
sanitation, and agriculture now active in the South. 

The officials of education in the Southern states met on 
a common platform, with Negro farm-demonstration agents, 
colored women supervisors of rural schools, and the direc- 
tors of the great systems of practical education in agriculture 
and sanitation in America. 

Who can gauge the benefit of a constructive meeting upon 
a common tolerant platform, where men of such power, men 
of different races and widely separate sections, meet for thought 
and effort directed to the common good? 

Hampton has cost lives and money. Armstrong died in 
his prime. Other officers and workers for the cause have died 
young, or have broken under the strain of raising funds to carry 
on the work. It is a work worthy of life sacrifice. It is sup- 
plied almost entirely by the individual gifts of public-spirited 
Americans. It has a wide constituency of loyal friends. 

Hampton today, with more than one hundred thousand 
dollars to raise from unassured sources for the work of the 
current year, makes its plea to America. 



22 









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